Making bread

Here is how I bake roasted garlic and rosemary bread.  It is quite good, even if I do say so myself. 

First we need to roast the garlic.  Take several heads of garlic and slice the top of the cloves off.  I put mine in a baking dish lined with foil.  Leave extra foil hanging over to cover the garlic.

I oiled them with sunflower seed oil.  You can use olive oil too.  I then turned them over.

Seal the foil over the garlic.  Oh I should have told you to preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Put the garlic in the preheated oven.

Set the timer for 35 minutes.



While we wait for the garlic to roast, pick some fresh rosemary, wash it under running water and pat dry.

Pull the leaves off the stems like in the picture.



Then chop finely.  You don't want big pieces in your bread.

Next I get some hard red wheat from my 5 gallon bucket in the pantry.

Put it in the top of my Nutrimill grinder.

Turn it on and a few minutes later.............

I have freshly ground whole wheat flour!

Now let's go check on that garlic in the oven, shall we?

Ooh, doesn't that look scrumptious?  The aroma  is lovely!

You just gently squeeze the cloves out of their paper shells.

And they are ready to use.

I have assembled my ingredients for the bread.  Sunflower oil, wheat gluten, agave, salt, flour, water and yeast.  And of course we have the roasted garlic and chopped fresh rosemary.

My handy dandy Bosch mixer.  This little jewel makes bread making simple and quick.

Here I have added 6 cups of warm water, 3/4 cup oil, 1/2 cup agave (or honey if you like) 2 heaping tablespoons of salt.

Next I add half the flour (about 7 cups) 1/3 cup wheat gluten, and 4 tablespoons of SAF instant yeast.

Mix on low speed and then gradually add the remaining 7-8 cups of flour.

I add this while the machine in running.  When you hear the motor slow down, turn it up to medium speed.

Set the timer once again for 10 minutes.  After putting the lid on the bowl of course.  But you knew that didn't you?  ;)  You of course can skip the mixer, and do this in a very large bowl.  Mixing and kneading by hand.  If you want to give it a try by hand I would definitely half the recipe.

Make sure you have spotlessly clean counter top.  Then I rub coconut oil on my counter. This prevents the dough from sticking to it.  I take the dough out of the mixer bowl and shape it into a large loaf.

Then I cut it into several balls.

Here is where I have added the roasted garlic and rosemary.  Had I not forgotten to add it to the mixer during the last minute of time, this would not have been necessary.  So I ended up working it in by hand.

One loaf on the far left, is plain without garlic and rosemary.  I used my french bread pan for two of the loaves.  The two little round ones are the girls'.  They always have to shape a small loaf when I bake.

Next I cover them with a flour sack towel and let them rise for about 25 minutes.

While the bread is rising, I wash up my mixer bowl and clean up the counter top.

After baking them for 25 minutes in a 375 degree oven this is how they come out.  Where is the other small loaf you ask?  Well it is at my Mother's house.  I ran out of room in my oven to bake all those loaves.  I always bake a loaf for my parents and this time I took it over unbaked.  Mom popped it into her oven and we both had fresh baked bread.

I rub the bread top with oil after it comes out of the oven.

I know you are wondering why in the world that one loaf resembles a whale with too many blow holes right?  Well I decided to stuff a few more cloves of roasted garlic in that one at the last minute.  I thought for sure it would bake up over the holes.  Nope!  Didn't happen.  That is okay, that whale loaf didn't last long anyway.  All of that bread has been eaten already.  Tomorrow I need to bake another batch of bread.  I will most likely make plain loaves and a couple of pizza crusts.

The next thing I will share with you is making jam.  I made 5 batches of berry jams just before I made this bread last week.  That is part of the reason the bread didn't last long.  Too easy to eat it with homemade jam!

Thanks for tuning in and watching my bread baking day.



Coming soon, bread making

I have taken photos and will be posting about how I made roasted garlic and rosemary bread.  I just need to find the time, or rather make the time to upload the photos.  Just wanted to let you know I have been working on something new to share with you all. 

Has it been nice Spring weather in your neck of the woods?  Here we are having rain, rain, and more rain!  And rather cold at night too.

Have a great day!

Sharing a bouquet of daffodils

This is my bouquet of daffodils Ed picked for me yesterday.  Aren't they just so cheery?  They have a sweet smell too.  I thank God every Spring for creating daffodils.  They bring so much hope and cheeriness after such a long dreary wet winter.

Sewing lessons

The girls had another sewing lesson yesterday.  They picked out fabric from my stash, decided on a pattern, then used the sewing machine to sew up their table runners.  They made them to use on their vanity tables.  They had so much fun.

Audrey sewing her strips together.

Showing her finished runner.

Showing the back.

Sally's turn at the machine.

Sally with her finished runner.

And here is the back side.

Here is my table runner.  The vase of flowers are some mustard the girls picked from the field next door.

Our next sewing project will be Bible covers maybe.  I have to see if I have enough zippers the correct size first.



Tsunami

We have been under a tsunami warning since early this morning.  Our river was at bank already and we thought we might have flooding due to it.  But thank the good Lord the tide was out when the tsunami hit the Oregon coast.  So we never had any flooding.  I am so thankful. 

We have a son, daughter in law and two grandchildren who live in Japan.  We are so thankful to know they are safe!  Mike if you read this know that you and Eriko and the children have been in our thoughts and prayers.  We love you.

Our prayers are with all those in Japan and in other areas hit by this disaster.

We have twins!

Ginger gave birth to two sweet little lambs last night!  One looks just like our ram and the other took after mama.  They are doing just fine, nursing and quite lively!

These aren't the best photos, but at least you can see our sweet little lambs!  The first to be born on Bountiful Acres!

We will keep posting photos as they grow.

Waiting on Ginger to lamb

We are waiting on our white ewe, Ginger to lamb.  She is really close.  This will be her second year to lamb.  Last year she gave birth to twins.  As big as she is that might be the case again this year!  We are all anxiously waiting on the little lamb/lambs to make their appearance.  I will definitely post pictures as soon as she lambs.

Anyone living in our area want two geese?  We are ready for them to go live somewhere else. 

The seed orders are coming in and then we are going to be starting our plants.  Ed needs to put the pellet stove in the greenhouse first.  We had a really hard frost and the temperature got down to 20 degrees in the greenhouse.  Yep!  Killed everything but the citrus trees.  So now I have no more veggies growing out there at all.  It will be so great to have heat in there for winter.  I will keep you all posted on how that is going.  I hope to be picking veggies all winter this year.